Rules
The Sims community has produced various sets of house rules for storytelling play, such as those for The Legacy Challenge. The neighborhood that Frank and Julie live in will be influenced by such rulesets, but will not adopt any of them wholesale; and in fact many of the rules here will be made up as needed, as the game goes along.
New sections will therefore be added to this page from time to time as appropriate. At launch, there are three sections: Hacks, Custom Neighborhood, and Starting Position.
Hacks
The proprietor of this neighborhood loves hacks and other game modifications, and could not abide any rule which forced him to give them up. There are, however, limits to what sorts of hacks he will use.
The MATY Director’s Cut is a necessity, as are many of the other critical game fixes and annoyance-killers available at More Awesome Than You!. The great majority of hacks produced by MATY members J.M. Pescado, twojeffs, crammyboy, and syberspunk are installed in the Frank and Julie game.
Beyond the MATY essentials, the general philosophy here is to freely use any hack that: a) fixes bugs in the game, b) reduces annoyances (for example, sims whining and waving because one of their needs is low is an “annoyance”, while the fact that their needs get low over time is not), c) cuts down on repetitive clicking and micromanagement, d) assists in custodial and organizational tasks, or e) makes the game more interesting and challenging.
Hacks and hacked objects are avoided, however, if they make the game easier—in that they allow sims to accomplish more with less sim effort, in less in-game time, than would otherwise be required—or if they allow a “quick fix” to a state of affairs (need desperation, aspiration failure, death) that comes about in the natural flow of play as a result of the sim’s (and/or player’s) own decisions.
A few hacks deserve special mention, in that they have allowed fine-tuning of this neighborhood to the proprietor’s exact specifications. Inge’s Agecons hack has been used to adjust life stages by adding one day to Child and eleven days to Adult, subtracting three days from Teen and eight from Elder, and roughly halving aspiration bonuses at the Elder transition. Version 4 of the Omnilothic Slower Skill Gains hack has been used to make skill points harder to earn, especially the lower-end ones. Autonomous Casual Romance by twojeffs has been installed to make romantic interactions more independent (and lively!), and also to allow fine-tuning of pregnancy odds (including “risky woohoo” odds which, while set at a rather low level, will always be there to make the Romance sim sweat). The customizable magic of twojeffs has also been used to create the ever-so-slight possibility of triplets and quads.
Custom Neighborhood
Frank and Julie live in Cardinal, Georgia, a custom neighborhood based on the Arbordale default terrain. Techniques developed at MATY were used to create the base neighborhood without generating any sims, beyond the bare minimum of NPCs. Clean custom templates were used to attach Académie Le Tour and the pre-made Downtown as subhoods, with their included playable sims but without any dormies or downtownies. The Open For Business and Pets expansion packs have been installed, but no separate Shopping District has been attached, and the addition of animal sims to the neighborhood has been circumvented for the time being.
A modest number of townies has been loaded into the neighborhood (mostly Adults, but also some Young Adults and one Elder), drawn from the self-sims of the proprietor’s friends and aquaintances at A Cuppa Joe and More Awesome Than You!.
Starting Position
The proprietor of this neighborhood does not approve of handing every sim a cool §20,000 simply for having been created. It does not seem right that a sim should be able to purchase a house free and clear, without ever having worked a day in his or her life. Therefore, Frank and Julie have been given one-tenth the usual amount, §2000 each, with which to start their lives in the town of Cardinal. They have been allowed to take out loans (using dentedtrain’s Loan Paintings) of an amount sufficient to allow them to purchase starter homes and inexpensive basic furnishings.
The original Frank and Julie, in the bedtime stories that the proprietor tells his children, are police officers. Therefore, both of their sims have been placed into the Law Enforcement career path at level three, Patrol Officer, the lowest level at which they would be full-fledged members of the force. They have been given the two Body points that would have been necessary to be promoted to that level, but no other skill points.
Frank and Julie have not been given University graduate status and the extra want slots that entails, even though they do both hold degrees in Criminal Justice. This is because their degrees are not from any of the sim Universities, and so do not confer the same advantages that would flow from having attended a proper, Llama-fancying institution.
Seeing as they are partners on the force, it seemed proper to start Frank and Julie out as friends, with a mutual 55 STR and 25 LTR. They do not begin the game with any other relationships.